Mods galore

So remember I wanted to knit a long cabled cardigan? Well, I eventually decided on Louhi. There are a few challenging things about this decision: 1) as the designer says, the pattern isn't so much a pattern as a set of guidelines; 2) it was written for a 48"/ 122cm chest size; 3) it's ankle length, and I want mid-thigh length.

As I said, these are challenges, and not insurmountable, but I'll be making major major modifications.

Luckily, I got gauge with my seed stitch swatch. Oh, right, I'm doing this with the "normal" seed stitch (purl the knits and knit the purls) rather than the double seed stitch (?) used in the pattern.

First up, the sleeve. The cabled hem band is knit, then stitches for the sleeve are picked up along one edge. To make the sleeve skinnier, I made the hem band shorter, and took the pattern's advice about where to start and stop knitting the cables to make them symmetric when I seam it into a circle.


I also picked up fewer stitches for the sleeve itself. This was fine as long as I had enough stitches to accommodate the large cable running up the sleeve. I also ignored all the instructions about increasing for the sleeve and pretty much winged it until it looked like it would fit right- wrapping the sleeve-in-progress around my arm gives me a pretty good idea of fit.

So far, so good.

The next tricky bit will be the sleeve cap shaping, which I will have to recalculate. This is trickier than it would normally be, because the sleeve cap for Louhi has a special cabled arch, and the pattern has carefully placed decreases to shape that arch. I'll have the same number of rows for the cap, but fewer stitches, so I'll have to figure out how to decrease fewer stitches in the same number of rows, yet still keep the arch shape. Stay tuned!